valéry

“Is it possible, after all, that in spite of brick and shaven faces, this world we live in is brimmed with wonders, and I and all mankind, beneath our garbs of commonplaceness, conceal enigmas that the stars themselves, and perhaps the highest seraphim, can not resolve?”

*

Later, writing on Vaudeville de Luxe

“A fetish, so the dictionaries tell us, is a spirit attached to a material object. ‘Hide your God, He’s your strength,’ advised the poet Paul Valéry, and the same goes for the fetish. It’s usually kept out of sight.”

The materiality of theater is a way of putting spirit into forms that can be removed/hidden?

Valéry, and later in the book, references to Blanchot and Frances Yates, suggest a coherence of pursuit (Cornell and the Soulographie boxes).